Muckross House and Gardens - County Kerry

Description from the Muckross House on the web:

The Muckross House was built in 1843, on the edge of Muckross Lake, at a cost of 30,000 Irish pounds for Henry Arthur Herbert the M.P. (member of parliament) for Kerry. The Herberts entertained many important guests at Muckross most notably Queen Victoria of England in 1861. In 1899 Muckross House, and its estate of 11,000 acres, was purchased by Lord Ardilaun of the Arthur Guinness Brewing family. The Guinness family did not live at Muckross, but rented the property to wealthy parties, who used it principally for hunting and fishing purposes. In 1911 the property was bought by Mr. William Bowers Bourn, a wealthy American, as a wedding gift for his daughter Maud and her husband Arthur Rose Vincent from Summerhill, County Clare. Maud died in 1929 and 3 years later in 1932, her husband and parents presented Muckross House and its 11,000 acres estate to the Irish Nation, becoming Ireland's first National Park. On the estate is the Muckross Abbey which was founded in 1448 and put to the torch by Cromwell's troops in 1652. The tombs of the abbey's founder, various Kerry chieftains, and several noted Irish poets are to be found near the abbey. The Muckross Abbey Muckross House has museum exhibits as well as period furnished rooms. The exhibits in the basement of the house graphically depicts the widespread poverty in Ireland before the turn of the century. Next to the house there is an exhibition dealing with life in Kerry in the 1930's.